The Price of Being Molly
Once upon a time, Molly Ivins was an outsider—a crusading political columnist with a sharp wit. Now she’s an insider, and what’s happening to her life isn’t always funny.
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The most obvious example of this is Ivin’s professional Texan routine. “She’s singing for her supper,” says media critic John Katz, who hired Ivins at the Herald and remains a fan. True, Ivins can’t control which questions she is asked. Talk of the Nation was just one example of many; on C-SPAN an interviewer once asked Ivins whether there is a building in Texas in the shape of the state, whether Jim Hogg had a daughter named Ura, why so many Texas men have two initials for a first name, how Texas could possibly elect a woman governor, and of course, whether George Bush is a Texan.
Ivins has perfected stock answers to such questions, but geographical gridlock has set in. Although she privately admits that Texas has changed enormously in the twenty-odd years she has been covering it — “There’s been a real decline in the number of outrageous crooks and outrageous characters” — she hasn’t yet found a way to capture the place that is Texas now. The old Texas was a sorry joke for all thinking people, easy to parody. It was racist, poor, uneducated, and proud of it. The new Texas — multiethnic, two-party, more sophisticated, more ambivalent about its own myths — still has its problems but often deserves better, or fresher, material than Ivins offers. Her coverage of Dallas’ foibles was livelier, for instance, than her coverage of the Legislature is now. Perhaps the most disheartening example is the first essay in her book, which she calls “an attempt to explain Texas to non-Texans.” It was written in 1972: “The reason folks here eat grits is because they ain’t got no taste. . . . Art is paintings of bluebonnets and broncos, done on velvet. Music is mariachis, blues and country. . . . Texans do not talk like other Americans. They drawl, twang, or sound like the Frito Bandito, only not jolly. Shit is a three syllable word with a y in it.” It isn’t that contemporary Texans can’t laugh at themselves; it’s simply getting harder to see themselves in Ivins’ jokes.
Celebrity status has also converted Ivins from a reporter to an armchair columnist. Perhaps because she has spread herself so thin, she does little original reporting, choosing instead to draw her opinions from the reporting of others. (Colleagues note that she rarely appears on the House floor, and they were surprised to see her take a seat on the Clinton-Gore bus.) Whenever she actually goes somewhere—such as the political conventions—the freshness quotient of her column soars.
The other drawback to her armchair reporting is the opportunity for error. Little mistakes creep into the column with unfortunate regularity—Ivins wrote that the largest newspaper in Arkansas nicknamed Clinton Slick Willie, but it didn’t—as do an unfortunate number of corrections. (One August column contained two.) Ivins has also made her share of television bloopers, as when she declared on NBC that Jesse Jackson won the Texas primary during the 1988 presidential campaign (he didn’t) or when she told Jay Leno on the Tonight show that Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis had resigned (he hadn’t).
Finally, as Ivins’ fame as a liberal has grown, her worldview has not; she’s loyal to a fault to her side of the political spectrum. While other journalists of the left, notably at the New Republic and the Washington Monthly, have taken a second look at entitlements, regulations, and the limits of government in times of diminishing resources and conflicting needs, her bogeymen have remained constant. Corporations, bankers, and Republicans are still the villains in her columns. The Morning News is still “a right-wing newspaper.” Lloyd Bentsen gets no credit for his dogged work on health-services policy, while Ann Richards is rarely criticized. (It’s doubtful that a conservative politician would have received the kindness that Ivins bestowed on Lena Guerrero — an “excellent” railroad commissioner — in her column.) These days, Ivins is revealing less and preaching more. When pressed, she will admit that the left has been no more successful in tackling social problems than the right, but she lives for conflict, not complexity. “There’s something fun about being on the front lines,” she says of the Texas she sees. “It’s much easier in a place where the good guys wear white hats and the bad guys wear black hats and there are fewer shades of gray.” For Ivins, the fun is all in the fight; it is the fight, after all, that tells her who she is.
Back onstage, Ivins’ speech is drawing to a close. She has grown nostalgic. She tells a favorite funny story about John Henry Faulk battling censorship in South Austin, then warns again that we could lose our freedoms if we don’t fight to preserve them. She closes by quoting another old political warrior on his memories of battle: “‘Tell them how much fun it was.’” Her smile is blissful, her voice rich with passion and something like joy.
“You get out there and freedom fight,” she says to the expectant faces in the dark, “and you’re gonna have a glorious time.”
IT IS A FRIDAY EVENING AT La Zona Rosa. Instead of Scholz’s worn wooden floors, beer signs, and an oak shaded patio, this place is stage-set funky, with corrugated tin walls, ceiling fans, folk art, and south of the border hues. Good new music plays on the sound system, and the tables are filled with politicos, artistes, and a pair of young lesbians with matching bleach jobs, necking aggressively. Few people seem to be thinking about changing Texas, much less about the nature of man.
But along one wall, Molly Ivins holds court with a group of friends. They are mostly middle-aged guys, quick with a quip and loud with their laughter. As the shadows grow and the waitress pours refills, the table grows damp with water rings and dusty with cigarette ash, and the conversation rises and falls like the waves of a warm and friendly sea. Concessions have been made to the passing of time and youth, as the group complains about aches and pains, Austin traffic, and the efficiency of their liquid diets — the kind of talk that probably doesn’t figure much in conversations at Scholz’s. But soon they’re diving into James Baker’s role as Bush campaign guru (“How long is this guy bein’ paid by the taxpayers?” Ivins demands. “Is this an ethical question that would puzzle Gib Lewis?”); the Republicans in general (“It’s getting wiggy out there — did Barbara say she couldn’t imagine why anybody would sleep with George?”); and maneuvering in the ongoing morass that is congressional and legislative redistricting. “How fast does it move and what is the time frame?” Ivins asks of one plan. When a friend hints that a liberal victory may come to pass, Ivins clutches a fist, raises it, and laughs, and you believe for a moment that, for her, this is almost enough.
A few more Capitol groupies arrive, as do a couple of reporters, including Kaye Northcott, now with the Star-Telegram. Bob Slagle, the wizened, gum-chewing state Democratic party chairman, takes a seat at the opposite end of the table from Ivins, and she looks slightly abashed. “Shit,” Ivins grumbles. “I been crappin’ on him for years.” But as the voices grow louder and the smoke thickens, the good-natured ribbing at the table continues. Someone even teases Ivins about being introduced as a “talk show maven.” A rowdy consultant with unruly hair brings a baby in a carrier, plunks her down near Slagle, and then grabs a seat near Ivins to smoke. Ivins graces the baby with one long appraising look and then rejoins the guys.
The conversation floats to the left, as she complains she can’t find the right bumper sticker for her new pickup truck. “I liked one that says, ‘Visualize World Peace,’” Ivins says, “but I think I want one that says ‘Visualize Armed Revolution.’” Someone brings up Martin Wiginton, a much-beloved Austin lefty who died and chose to be buried in a pauper’s grave. It’s suggested that they take up a collection for a headstone inscription. Everyone eagerly agrees.
In the seconds that follow, you can sense a world slipping away, that ordered one where right and wrong were separate and distinct, where the battle lines were drawn and the boundaries clear, where wars were waged against enemies from without, not within. It was a world far, far from best-seller lists and talk show appearances; it was a world where it was easier to see what really mattered. For Molly Ivins, that world is gone. She has learned to claim her place in this one even as she mourns, like the most faithful lover, the loss of the old.
“I’ve made Kaye co-executor of my will,” Ivins confides. Then she pauses just a beat; the line has come to her, and a look of the devil lights her eyes. “I said, ‘Kaye, if there’s anything wrong with my head, pull the plug. Scatter my ashes in the Hill Country. Give my money to the ACLU.’”
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